


Gorgeous

by LaVeraceVia



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Captivity, Carenzo - Freeform, Coming Untouched, Cunnilingus, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Hallucinations, Hotel Sex, Laughter During Sex, Naked Female Clothed Male, One Night Stands, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Fantasy, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-22 05:48:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2496746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVeraceVia/pseuds/LaVeraceVia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's already shaking her head, sensing where he's headed with this and caught somewhere between amusement and indignation. He leans closer, propping his elbows on his knees, stares her right in the face with those dark, mischievous eyes, and says, “What I'm suggesting is that you let me help. Use me tonight. ” </p>
<p>He pauses a moment for effect. “Let's fuck the pain away.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my awesome beta and number one cheerleader [LacyMarie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/LacyMarie/pseuds/LacyMarie). Thanks, you gorgeous geek, you. ;)

Caroline will laugh at herself the next morning, incredulous when she thinks about it, remembering what it felt like to be naked underneath Enzo.

Post-Stefan-encounter, she would have ranked the evening as one of the worst nights of her life. Post-Enzo-encounter, she wasn't so sure.

She lets him talk her into stopping halfway between Atlanta and Mystic Falls at a roadside motel for the night. She'd promised Elena that she'd spend the night with her back in the dorm, but she can't just put on her happy face and pretend everything's okay for Elena's perfect little mind-wiped sake, not now. Not when _nothing_ is okay. 

And fine, that's not fair to Elena, but for once Caroline doesn't have it in her to be fair to Elena, or anyone else. Not tonight. Not after realizing that Stefan didn't give even the tiniest damn about her.

No, not tonight. Tonight she's exhausted, hollowed out from the crying and the pain, and she's mad at Stefan for not caring and madder at herself for caring too much, and all she wants to do is find somewhere to lay her head down and close her eyes and forget about stupid people and their stupid girlfriends for a while.

“So. When's the last time you got laid, gorgeous?”

Caroline is reclining on the bed, shoes kicked off and legs crossed at the ankles, frowning up at a water spot on the ceiling shaped vaguely like a old time-y lady's parasol, when Enzo asks his _totally inappropriate_ question. She doesn't answer, just cuts her eyes over to where he stands at the sink pouring himself a drink and scowls at him in disapproval.

He holds both hands up in the universal “don't shoot” gesture but the effect is somewhat marred by the permanent crooked smirk that never seems to leave his face. 

“Now don't give me that look darling,” he demurs as he approaches the bed, a hotel highball glass in each hand. 

“I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm simply—gin?” He cuts himself off, offering her a glass filled with top-shelf liquor pilfered (compelled) from an ABC store down the road. She rolls her eyes, but sits up to accept it anyway. Faces him as he sits down on the bed opposite hers, close enough for their knees to bump. 

He smiles in approval. “Good girl. Go on, take a sip. Have you ever had gin? You'll love it. Now, where was I?”

“Being offensive,” she supplies wryly. She takes a sip of the drink. More like a gulp, really. He's right; it is good.

“Ah, yes. I'm not trying to be offensive, I'm simply suggesting perhaps a more enjoyable alternative to spending your night moping over that arsehole Stefan Salvatore,” he replies.

“I'm not _moping_ ,” she protests, “I'm...processing. It's been a sucky couple of months, okay? And finding out my best friend doesn't care about m—anyone! About anyone. It really hurts.”

He tilts his chin up in that cocksure manner of his. “Like I said, there's a better way.”

It's a mistake to ask. She's aware, okay? She takes another big swig of the liquor in her hand to fortify herself, sighs, and says, “Okay, I'll bite.” She has to roll her eyes (for probably the eighteenth time today, rough estimate) at his wolfish grin.

“Fine, bad choice of words. You know what I mean. I so know I'm going to regret this but,” she waves a hand airily, “Suggest away!”

He makes a show of draining his glass, never breaking eye contact with her, before he says, “In my experience, there's nothing better than the diversion of the physical to distract from the torment of the emotional, for a bit anyway...”

She's already shaking her head, sensing where he's headed with this and caught somewhere between amusement and indignation. He leans closer, propping his elbows on his knees, stares her right in the face with those dark, mischievous eyes, and says, “What I'm suggesting is that you let me help. Use  _me_ tonight. ” 

He pauses a moment for effect. “Let's fuck the pain away.”

She empties her drink to get rid of the glass, then flops backwards on the bed, making a pointedly exasperated noise. “You have  _got_ to be kidding me!” 

She's hoping the dim lamplight of the room will camouflage the flush of heat that coursed beneath her skin at his blatant proposition, lighting her face on fire.

“I'm not sleeping with you Enzo. If there's one thing that I've learned this past year it's that sex never solves anything.” 

She pretends not to notice when the edge of the bed sinks down under his weight, refuses to make eye contact when his silhouette enters her field of vision. Tries to ignore the excited little thrill that zings through her belly at his nearness.

“I never said it did, gorgeous. I'm just offering a way to divert your mind for a little while. No strings. No obligations. Just one mate, helping out another.”

He rests a hand by her head and leans directly over her and into her line of sight, making it difficult to avoid his gaze. “Allow me to illustrate how serious I am. What if we take penetration off the table?”

Her eyes flicker to his face, and she can feel her brow furrow in suspicion. She asks, “And that means...?”

He bends down, brushing her hair out of the way to place one soft, shiver-inducing kiss against her collar bone. There's not even a hint of mirth in his face when he raises his head to look at her. His eyes are intent and full of heat, when he replies, “Let me go down on you.”

_Oh my GOD._ What a thing to say.

The thing is, he reminds her so much of another mistake she made, not too long ago. Because he was right, that first time they met—she does have a thing for accents. She has a thing for intense too. And broken.

But unlike the last time she found herself in a situation like this, with a man whose eyes wanted to  _take,_ Enzo's eyes only offer. 

And...and...why the hell shouldn't she? He turns her on, she can't deny it. And he's been more steadfast recently than the any of the other people she calls her friends. He's offering. He wants it. And, it turns out, so does she.

That's what makes up her mind for her, what gives her the simple answer she needs. She meets his eyes and says simply: “Okay.”

And so she finds herself sprawled flat on her back on a cheap motel room mattress, her denim skirt rucked up around her waist as Enzo slowly slides her panties down her legs.

She can't look at him. It's too intense to watch his face as he reveals the most intimate parts of her, so she looks at the ceiling again, her eyes sliding unfailingly to that damned water spot.

It's not that she's a got a thing against cunnilingus. Despite Damon Salvatore's past jibes, she's not actually a prude. She's comfortable with her body. She likes sex, and she knows she happens to be pretty good at it too. And she's  _definitely_ a big fan of orgasms. But it doesn't stop her thighs from shaking a little, only partly from arousal, as Enzo slides his hands between her knees and slowly...spreads...them...apart. 

And what the hell? It's not like she's a virgin. Not even close!

But none of her other partners were super into performing this particular act either.

Matt was a typical high school boyfriend—sweet and eager (because he's Matt) but way more interested in getting to the main event than lingering on any kind of foreplay. And Tyler, for all his talent in the bedroom, never really enjoyed going down on her. He didn't like the taste or the smell or the general messiness, so she never asked. She was only with Klaus the once. Well, a couple of times technically, just that once. But they never got around to doing this. And she prefers not to think back to the time before the others, when she was with Damon. For better or for worse, those memories stay firmly stuffed away in a box in the corner of her mind labeled DO NOT OPEN.

It's just that she feels so  _exposed_ like this, open to Enzo's gaze, and even without looking at him, she knows he's watching her intently.

Then he exhales, warm breath ruffling the hair between her legs, tickling. She gasps, startling a little, and her eyes are drawn unerringly to his. Surprisingly, he's staring at her face, not down...there. He smiles when their eyes meet, that familiar lop-sided grin.

“You're natural down here. I love it.”

She groans, slaps her hand over her eyes, so embarrassed she's barely able to look at him through the slits between her fingers. “Oh my god! Normally I...but there just...hasn't been anyone...in a while. So, no reason for upkeep? Sorry. This is so weird. Oh my god.”

“You know,” he counters offhandedly, “I will never understand this fixation that so-called modern men have with bald pussy.”

She hiccups.

He winces a little, the closest thing she's seen to regret passing over his face. “Forgive me, that's crass. I still forget how behave amongst company sometimes. It's just simply—who the hell wants to make love to someone that looks like a prepubescent girl?”

She's not sure if the question is rhetorical or not, but there's no way she's going to reply.

“Darling.” He wraps a hand around her wrist, pries her hand away from her eyes. He maintains eye contact as he lays his hand on her, cupping her pubic bone, and his palm is so hot where it presses against her. He skates his thumb through the springy hair, and the motion tugs, just a little, lighting her up on the inside. 

She feels a rush of warmth, wetness, as arousal snakes its way through her lower belly, making her ache.

“Lovely,” he breathes.

Anxious to feel his mouth on her already, she presses her teeth into her bottom lip when he ducks his head between her legs. But instead of touching her like she wants, he moves to the side, rasping his rough, stubbled jaw against the tender skin of her inner thighs, moving to rub against one leg, then the other. All the while his warm breath gusts over her center like a caress, the sound of his breathing growing audibly more ragged as he goes.

He moves back a little, places his thumbs on her outer lips and spreads her open, eliminating her body's last bit of modesty. She can see his nostrils flare, hear as he quietly, deliberately inhales the scent of her. Her spine liquifies in a hot sensation that's half humiliation, half arousal.

He rests a hand flat on her belly, fingers splayed, palm pressing gently down with a reassuring pressure, and finally,  _finally_ puts his mouth on her, pressing with the flat of his tongue, licking a broad swathe from her...from a place she'd never even let her boyfriends touch, all the way up to where she wants his mouth the most. He laps at her there, once and again, and then repeats the motion over and over until she loses count and she's squirming and gasping. 

And somewhere in the middle, Caroline...lets go. He promised her pleasure, and she finally sinks into the sensations and lets him give it.

He slides both hands underneath her bottom and lifts a little, bringing her up to his face and sealing his mouth against her in the dirtiest of kisses. She whines, an injured, animal-like noise, and bucks against him, reaching down with both hands to find something, anything to anchor herself. Her hands find his head, one landing on his crown, the other at the nape of his neck. His hair is softer that she would have thought, almost downy, and she strokes her hands through it, enjoying the feel of it between her fingers and the deep  _mmmm_ of approval he makes that thrums against her body. 

“Holy ffff–!” She can't finish the word, her voice breaking. And if she wasn't so consumed, so on fire, she'd be embarrassed, because the noise that just came out of her mouth can only be described as a squeak. But the thought barely even registers, because Enzo's mouth is filthy, and it's SO good.

But he's not immune to the fire he's kindling in her either, as he demonstrates when he breaks contact with her to gasp, eyes flashing and hot.

“Christ! Darling. You're so fucking gorgeous. Look at you, all wet and swollen and pinked up for me. Amazing.”

He presses his thumb against her, circling, while the other hand drops down to grab himself through the front of his jeans.

“ _Fuck._ I could explode right now, just looking at you. You've ruined me,” he says, grinning. “I'll never be able to hear anyone say 'gorgeous' again without thinking of you like this.” He runs a hand desperately through his hair, laughs ruefully at himself. “I won't be fit to roam in public. Just the thought of you and suddenly I'll be the pervert tenting his pants while the maids run away screaming and mothers cover their children's eyes.”

“Oh my _god_ Enzo, shut up!” she exclaims, laughing and overheated. Desperate. She half sits, just long enough to rip her top off over her head and wrap both hands around the base of his neck to pull his face back down between her legs. He returns enthusiastically, offering no resistance. She collapses back down to the bed, overcome.

With his face buried between her legs and his mouth occupied, he places a hand on the outside of each thigh and pats, urging. She knows what he wants, and complies, throwing both legs over his shoulders. Her hips undulate, riding against his face, while her heels dig in at the small of his back.

The sounds they both make fill the room: sighs and gasps and moans and grunts, desperate, reciprocal noises that give the impression they're engaged in a way more mutually gratifying act. It turns her on to hear him so turned on.

The pleasure grows in her belly and her groin, spreading tingling chills across her bottom and down the backs of her legs. He must feel it in the tension of her muscles because he tightens the grip of one hand against the outside of her thigh, like he's bracing her, or bracing himself maybe, pressing hard enough that she'd have long, finger-shaped bruises underneath the skin if she didn't heal so quickly.

He slides the other hand under and up to press a warm fingerprint against the opening of her body, using just enough pressure to light her up with sensation without actually slipping inside. When he rolls his tongue against her in tandem, the bright wave rising inside her crests. She has just enough time to reach out to grab his hand where it rests on her thigh, intertwining their fingers and feeling his squeeze back desperately, before she  _breaks_ , crying out, calling his name.

He continues his ministrations through the aftershocks, gentling his movements as she comes down. Her hand, the one not clutching tightly to his, finds its way to his head again, and she pets the softness of his hairline at the base of his skull.

“Wow,” she says.

He makes a low, assenting noise in the back of his throat, and removes his mouth from her with a final, light kiss. His free hand shoots down to grab roughly at his denim-covered crotch as his body gives a hard shudder.

He moans, and sort of collapses bonelessly where he lies, wide shoulders still wedging her legs open as he drops to pillow his head exhaustedly against her thigh. The pressure strains the already overstretched muscle. It doesn't hurt, the post-orgasm endorphins doing their job, but it's enough to wake her from the pleasure-stupor she drifts in.

She raises her head. “Wait a minute, was that..? Did you just—ow! Cramp! Cramp!”

Her leg, the same one he lays his head on, spasms from the knee to the tips of her toes, the calf muscle kinked into a hard knot, the foot caught somewhere between a ballet pointe and a flex, contorting so hard it looks like a Barbie doll's foot.

His pushes up from his ungainly sprawl between her legs, still caught in the heavy-lidded daze of his own afterglow, apparently. He eases her spread legs into a more comfortable position and takes her foot in his hand, digging his thumbs into the instep to massage out the cramp then working his way up to do the same to the calf. The pain eases.

They make eye contact over her leg. She's not sure which one of them lets go first, but then they're both giggling, punch-drunk and giddy.

As their laughter dies down, Enzo clears his throat, but his attempt at regaining composure ends in an undignified, decidedly uncool snort. "You do realize darling, that I'm so good I literally just curled your toes?"

That sets off another round of giggles.

When she catches her breath, she removes her foot from his grasp and pushes gently against his chest with her toes.

“Okay, I'll agree. As long as you realize, _darling_ , that I'm so good I made you come in your pants without even touching you,” she counters, teasing.

He doesn't say anything for a long beat, and she thinks maybe she's said the wrong thing. But then he turns his head to the side and lightly bites at the inside of her knee before replying, “Yes, you are.”

He's up and off the bed, moving away before she can respond. Though she's not sure what she could say if she did.

He returns with a warm washcloth that he presses against the slick inside of her thigh. But the easygoing comfort of the moment is lost.

“I got it,” she says, taking the cloth out of his hand. She wiggles clumsily off the bed and stands, hesitates for an awkward moment before shimmying the denim skirt down her legs. She's already naked in front of him—it's not like four inches of denim bunched around her waist is doing much to hide that. And anyway, now he's the one who's avoiding her eyes.

“Enzo-” she says haltingly. “I just...thank you.” It's inadequate, but she means it. Besides, what else do you say to the guy who just gave you oral sex out of like, the goodness of his heart?

She'll find herself thinking of Enzo's reply many times afterwards, in the future, and even when she's hurting, she'll feel herself flushing with heat at the memory:

He takes her hand and brings it to his mouth, closing his eyes as he drops two kisses to the skin, one at her wrist and then another, more lingering one against her palm.

“Any time,” he says.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Unbidden, the image of the lovely Miss Caroline Forbes spread out underneath him comes to mind, the intensity of the vision hitting him like a shot to the gut. It's a thought that won't be banished easily, even if he had any inclination to (he does not). Because this isn't just the wanderings of a feverish mind. This really happened._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> In Tripp's holding cell, Enzo revisits an old survival trick from his Augustine days to preserve his sanity.

Enzo's mind wanders in confinement. He can't say it's entirely involuntary. The hunger pangs come quickly when one is forced to live off barely an ounce of blood a day. If that. He learned long ago that it was easier to let his thoughts drift up and out, away from his body, to some easier place where his veins weren't collapsing, slowly turning him into a dried husk of a corpse from the inside out.

After a week of isolation, chained and trapped by that bastard Tripp, the meanderings of his desperate, starving brain have become so vivid, it's hard to tell what's real and what's imagined anymore.

That's a lie. The easy, pleasure-soaked experiences, the good parts, are the imagined ones and the pain is real; Enzo accepted that as his lot in life a long time ago. He'd created this handy little survival trait for himself in that Augustine cell, decades before.

Back then, he used to imagine Maggie: her warmth, her smile, how they'd touch if he could ever experience her presence with no bars between them. Sometimes he'd create whole lifetimes for them, in a simple paradise of a world where there was no Augustine Institute, and he was just a simple human man. He imagined waking up with Maggie every morning, holding her close at night. He imagined proposing, her happy tears when she said yes. He imagined her belly swelling with his son, and then again, a baby girl this go 'round, and he was the one misty-eyed with joy this time.

He imagined other things too: baser, more carnal acts—such intimate, dirty things that by rights should have made his cock harder than steel, if he'd had enough blood flow left in his body. But satisfying as it was to imagine Maggie underneath him, naked skin sliding against his, he always felt vaguely ashamed afterwards, as if he was violating her trust somehow. As if he was violating her.

He told himself that it didn't matter, but he could never shake the feeling entirely. Then he sent Maggie away and Damon abandoned him not long after, and Ezno stopped letting his mind imagine beautiful things altogether. It hurt worse to imagine hope where there was none.

But in this damned dark shithole Tripp has him chained in, the old habit returns easily. He tries to find Maggie in his head again, but the image that comes to mind is a recent, more tangible thing.

Unbidden, the image of the lovely Miss Caroline Forbes spread out underneath him comes to mind, the intensity of the vision hitting him like a shot to the gut. It's a thought that won't be banished easily, even if he had any inclination to (he does not). Because this isn't just the wanderings of a feverish mind. This really happened.

He'd never had an encounter that was at once so gratifying and yet so completely unsatisfying at the same time. It was so, so good—but it left him with a very specific taste, one he fears he'll never be able to sate.

By rights he should be mortified about the whole thing—coming in his pants like a schoolboy because he was so turned on by a beautiful woman. And he is a _bit_ chagrined about the matter. But he finds that mostly he looks back on the experience with an inordinate amount of pride in himself, at his ability to set Caroline Forbes on fire with just the use of his mouth against her body.

He'd even done so whilst operating with a handicap, having promised to exclude any act of penetration from their play for the evening. He'd seen Caroline's hesitation to his proposal of intimacy as diversion from her pain. So he 'd offered the compromise of orgasm without ingress. He'd wanted to make it clear that his offer was truly intended for her benefit, not just a ploy to get his own rocks off. Of course, he'd cocked that up by getting off anyway, but she'd seemed more amused than offended by his laughable moment of lost control.

And after his time with the Augustines, having his body probed and prodded and otherwise violated in every way conceivable, Enzo, more so than most members of his sex, has an innate appreciation for why a woman would hesitate to open her body in such a vulnerable way. Especially to someone she didn't completely trust. And Enzo didn't fool himself to think that Caroline trusted him completely, at least not yet. He'd intended to win that trust eventually, before that bastard Stefan Salvatore doomed him to die a second time.

Now, he sensed, he'd seen Caroline for the last time, in the flesh anyway. The only remnant that he had left was the memory of that night.

And as the spectre of his own death draws near (again), he finds himself dissatisfied that he couldn't experience _more_.

He relives the memory over and over in his head, breaking it apart, turning it upside down, viewing it from every angle until he can direct it like a movie in his head: slowing down at a particular arch of her spine, rewinding a scene to hear her gasp again, pausing on a close-up just _there._ And then his brain does a funny thing. It begins to embellish memory with fantasy—fantasy that seems, somehow, as real as that night in the hotel room, the one becoming indistinguishable from the other.

In his memory, he's in the middle of the act, and she's so amazing, so _gorgeous_ , that he finds he has to stop, catch his breath, squeeze his cock through his pants so he doesn't lose it then and there. _You've ruined me_ , he pants as he tears his mouth away from her. He needs her to know.

 _I'll never be able to hear anyone say ''gorgeous'' again without thinking of you like this._ He rambles on stupidly, something about making a fool of himself in public, and then laughs at the lust-addled silliness spilling from his own mouth.

She laughs too, then she sits up to tear her top off, baring her breasts to him. But he has little time to appreciate the view before she's pressing his face back down where she wants it with a hand at the back of his neck. He goes willingly.

And then suddenly the memory spins itself into something new. He hears her voice asking him, no _begging him._

 _Wait Enzo, wait. I want you to come inside_. _Please._

He pulls back with a gasp, looks up at her face, sees the wide-eyed surprise at her own words.

 _Please, Enzo,_ she says, surprise turning to hungry certainty.

Then they're frantic together: her pushing his trousers down just far enough to get his cock free, him lining himself up with one hand, and pushing, and _there,_ he's in. With one long stroke he's seated to the hilt, their bodies flush against each other, Enzo gasping in arousal.

Caroline's breasts are heaving with her breath, body flushed all over. Enzo longs to let his fangs drop so he can drag them delicately against the undercurve of a breast, teasing just on the edge of pain before soothing the tingle left in their wake with a wet swipe of his tongue. But he can't, because Caroline has grabbed a handful of his arse in both hands and pulled him impossibly tighter against her, ordering him with both word and action. _Move_.

And Enzo, while skilled at a great many things, has never been much of a multi-tasker. In truth, his skill in the bedroom is owed particularly to the single-minded focus with which he attacks every task. And in the face of such fervor from the lady, what else is he to do? He moves. Thrusting slowly at first, hips slamming home at the end of each slide with a sharp _snap,_ his movements rife with intent to drive her over the edge.

But there's something about Caroline Forbes that overrides his hard-won self control every time, and while he's been no monk since gaining his freedom from the Augustines and returning to life from the Other Side, he certainly hasn't been with a woman he wanted (craved) as badly as Caroline either. Not now, maybe not even before.

His discipline slips and then dies, and he doesn't mourn its passing. His thrusts speed until he's pistoning in and out, his movements a blur, until all he can hear is the visceral slap of skin against skin and the satisfying suck of the wetness between their bodies.

Caroline pokes fun at his vigour, her words breathless. _If I'd...oh! If I'd known you were going to do your best imi...imitation of a jackhammer Enzo, I'd have given you a p-pillow so I could sit back and enjoy the show!_ But her hands against his backside urge him on.

Together they sketch out a tantric encyclopedia in that room, fucking on every surface and then back again. Enzo rewinds his favorite moments, watching them again.

There's the time with both of them on their knees, his front pressed against her back, with his thumbs fitted to the perfect dimples above her lovely rear end, Caroline using the headboard for leverage as she presses back to give as good as she gets.

There's the moment in the shower, Caroline on her knees before him while Enzo bows his head under the stream of water and braces his hands against the shower walls so he doesn't drop when his own knees shake.

There's Caroline in the room's lone armchair, her legs spread wide with Enzo on his knees in front of her this time, bracing her legs open with his shoulders while she keens and pulls his hair.

There's the memorable time in the hotel parking lot, Caroline laid back against hood of her car, and Enzo bare-arsed, his pants around his ankles, while the front desk clerk (who bears a striking resemblance to one Stefan Salvatore) looks on in scandalized horror. What can Enzo say? He's an exhibitionist AND a vengeful bastard.

But his favorite part of the memory-fantasy is afterwards, lying close with her on the scratchy hotel sheets, her leg tossed over his hip, his hand lazily combing at her sweaty hair. He tells her the truth, _I'd stay here forever with you, Blondie. Did you know that?_

His Caroline-figment opens her mouth to respond, but he never hears her answer. Instead he wakes to the sound of his own screams as fire lashes across his ribs as Tripp carves into his side with a vervain-tipped blade.

The bastard regards him with those deceptively kind blue eyes. “Where did you go just now? You can't pass out on me yet Enzo. We're not done here.” He slaps Enzo across the face. Enzo barely feels it.

“But you're not here, so you'll never know that,” Enzo tells the ghost of his memory, the image of her lingering before his eyes for a moment before she's gone.

“I _am_ here,” Tripp insists at his non sequitur, driving the tip of the blade in between two ribs for emphasis.

But Enzo knows. It's not hard to remember, when nothing ever changes—the pleasure is the lie, the pain is always real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it bears mentioning this is pretty much my personal head-canon for what's happening between Caroline and Enzo when they're not on screen. I like the idea that this could actually be happening between the two of them, at least in the hypothetical. I intend to keep these "behind-the-scenes" vignettes coming as long as inspiration strikes. I'm sure there will be a twist on the show at some point in the near future that will forcibly disabuse me of those notions and make this fic a legitimate AU, but until then ignorance is bliss! 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Feedback is love!


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